Blood Brothers Page 0,21

of the people you see on the street every day, maybe they won't make it through the next round. Maybe we won't. What the hell." He rapped his beer against Cal 's. "We've got the now, plus five months to figure this out."

"I can try to go back again."

"Not unless Gage is here. We can't risk it unless we're together. It's not worth it, Cal. The other times you only got bits and pieces, and took a hell of a beating for it."

"Older and wiser now. And I'm thinking, if it's showing itself now-our dreams, what happened to Quinn-it's expending energy. I might get more than I have before."

"Not without Gage. That's...Hmm," he said as his attention wandered over his friend's shoulder. "Fresh flowers."

Glancing back, Cal saw Quinn standing behind lane one, her coat open and a bemused expression on her face as she watched Myers, graceful as a hippo in toe shoes, make his approach and release his lucky red ball.

"That's Quinn."

"Yeah, I recognized her. I read the books, too. She's hotter than her picture, and that was pretty hot."

"I saw her first."

Fox snorted, shifted his eyes to sneer at Cal. "Dude, it's not about who saw her first, it's who she sees. I pull out the full power of my sexual charm, and you'll be the Invisible Man."

"Shit. The full power of your sexual charm wouldn't light up a forty-watt bulb."

Cal pushed off the stool when Quinn walked toward him.

"So this is why I got the brush-off tonight," she said. "Pizza, beer, and bowling."

"The Hawkins Hollow hat trick. I'm on manager duty tonight. Quinn, this is Fox O'Dell."

"The second part of the triad." She shook Fox's hand. "Now I'm doubly glad I decided to check out what seems to be the town's hot spot. Mind if I join you?"

"Wouldn't have it any other way. Buy you a beer?" Fox asked.

"Boy, could you, but...make it a light one."

Cal stepped back to swing around the counter. "I'll take care of it. Anything to go with it? Pizza?"

"Oh." She looked at the pizza on the counter with eyes that went suddenly dewy. "Um, I don't suppose you have any with whole-wheat crust and low-fat mozzarella?"

"Health nut?" Fox asked.

"Just the opposite." Quinn bit her bottom lip. "I'm in a lifestyle change. Damn it, that really looks good. How about if we cut one of those slices in half." She sawed the side of her hand over the plate.

"No problem."

Cal got a pizza cutter and slid it down a slice.

"I love fat and sugar like a mother loves her child," Quinn told Fox. "I'm trying to eat more sensibly."

"My parents are vegetarians," Fox said as they each picked up a half slice. "I grew up on tofu and alfalfa."

"God. That's so sad."

"Which is why he ate at my house whenever he could manage it, and spent all his money on Little Debbies and Slim Jims."

"Little Debbies are food for the gods." She smiled at Cal when he set her beer on the counter. "I like your town. I took a walk up and down several blocks of Main Street. And since I was freezing my ass off, went back to the really charming Hotel Hollow, sat on my windowsill, and watched the world go by."

"Nice world," Cal said, "that moves a little slow this time of year."

"Umm," was her agreement as she took a minute bite of the point of her narrow triangle of pizza. She closed her eyes on a sigh. "It is good. I was hoping, being bowling-alley pizza, it wouldn't be."

"We do okay. Gino's across the street is better, and has more selections."

She opened her eyes to find him smiling at her. "That's a lousy thing to tell a woman in the middle of a lifestyle change."

Cal leaned on the counter, bringing that smile a little closer, and Quinn found herself losing her train of thought. He had the best quick and crooked grin, the kind a woman wanted to take a testing nibble of.

Before he could speak, someone hailed him, and those eyes of quiet gray glanced away from hers toward the end of the counter. "Be right back."

"Well." Jeez, her pulse had actually tripped. "Alone at last," she said to Fox. "So you and Cal and the as-yet-absent Gage Turner have been friends since you were kids."

"Babies, actually. In utero, technically. Cal's and Gage's mother got together with mine when my mother was teaching a Lamaze class. They had a kind of roundup with the class a couple